Popular reviews

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  Review by Zach Green ★★★½

  If the Neverending Story was horny as hell and every second word was "Kate Bush"

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  Review by Alan Mattli ★★★ 2

  Locarno Film Festival 2021 #13

  Producer, touring the set: "I must say, Monsieur Mandico, I'm impressed. You seem to have gathered the best team of set and costume designers, makeup artists, lighting technicians, and composers money can buy. This movie will look and sound like a masterpiece. Do you have a script to match this artistry?"

  Bertrand Mandico, scribbling stick figures onto a commemorative Kate Bush napkin: "A what?"

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  Review by Naomi Katz ★★★★½ 1

  why don’t I live on a lesbian acid laser gun planet fml

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  Review by Burrows ½ 8

  TIFF 2021
  #30

  A few years ago, directors Bertrand Mandico and Katrin Olafsdottir decided to develop their own alt-movie style manifesto akin to the Vinterberg/Von Trier ‘Dogma 95’ articles. The Mandico-Olafsdottir proclamation is known as the ‘Incoherence Manifesto’. Its rules mandate avoiding digital effects, doing all sound in post, using expired film stock, creating vague and dreamy sets, and having actors either overact or underact. ‘Incoherent’ films are meant to be liberating, disturbed, and dreamlike with a freeing aesthetic.

  AFTER BLUE (DIRTY PARADISE) is a good taste-test for the ‘Incoherence Manifesto’, but it doesn’t make one wish for a buffet. It certainly checks off the boxes on the ‘Incoherence’ rubric. The thing is though, AFTER BLUE is completely inaccessible. It’s…

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  Review by Sarah ★★★★½

  And if I only could!
  I'd make a deal with God!
  And I'd get him to swap our places!
  Be running up that road!
  Be running up that hill!
  Be running up that building!
  If I only could, oh...

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  Review by Michelle ★★★★½

  "To be incoherent means to have faith in cinema, it means to have a romantic approach, unformatted, free, disturbed and dreamlike, cinegenic, an epic narration. Incoherence that's an absence of cynicism but not irony. It's embracing the genre without penetrating it."
  --Bertrand Mandico

  Director Bertrand Mandico's first feature film Wild Boys (2017) was a luminous and exuberant celebration of sex and gender fluidity, casting women in male roles then tossing that masculinity aside in the actual film itself, changing them back into women, seamlessly shifting them back-and-forth until they existed in a space in-between. His work feels phantasmagorical, an alternate reality where the air is infused with glitter, and the lighting is always bisexual. He continues his path embracing the…

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  Review by Bob McCully ★★★★½ 6

  On a planet inhabited only by women, a girl named Roxy (aka Toxic) comes across a woman buried in sand up to her neck. Though this woman appears to be dangerous, Roxy pulls her out of the beach and lets her free, erupting her desires for murder and seduction.
  After this mysterious outcast kills 3 daughters of the tribe, Roxy and her mother Zora (a hairstylist, who uses a laser razor to remove body hair) are ordered to hunt down this predatory woman deep in the slimy and mysterious jungle of their planet. And you know what this villainous woman's name is? Kate Bush

  Welcome to Bertrand Mandico. You will not be the same after this slow-motion highlighter pink lightning…

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  Review by ZacharyBinx ★★★ 1

  I was sooo on board for the first hour and sooo ready for it to be over the last 70 minutes. It's hard to dislike a film that's so original and visually breathtaking and points should be awarded for the insane world building and absurd horniness of literally every scene. But there's barely a plot to all of this, just a mother-daughter mission and an acid trip. I can forgive that if a film is 90 minutes but for 130 I would need an acid tab of my own.

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  Review by Ryan ★★★★

  Bertrand Mandico has created a wonderful world beyond words, where only emotion can be believed and trusted. Toxic desire reigns supreme, enforcing an exhaustive monarchy that only encourages violence and volatility. Sex, truth, power, and love also wage a battle for dominance over this strange planet, fighting tooth and nail to absolve the inhabitants of their mortal sin. After Blue is, in short, a misty masterpiece meticulous in detail. Sensual, stunning, stylish, and strange. A goopy, glimmering fantasia full of glitter and fashion.

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  Review by Chloë

  Unreal visuals, great score, amazing in-camera effects, but if I'm being real this would need to be a tight 90 for me to sit down and watch it again. I'd definitely like to study some parts of this and it would be a great 'throw it on in the background of a party' kind of movie.

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  Review by Noa ★★★★

  Ngl this felt very much like how it felt to be 4 years old and watching the neverending story for the first time. I kinda wish all movies were like this.

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  Review by belial_carboni ★★★★ 4

  After Blue is a whimsical descent into a lush world of dreamy surrealism. A psychadelic vision quest into the deepest corners of the mind. A kaleidoscope of colour and ethereal imagery bursting from every frame. Hypnotic like a floating neon cloud it's easy to get absorbed into it's disorienting grasp.

  Mandico's films always get that dopamine pumping. A sexually charged film yet the nudity and sleaze is handled in a purposeful manner making it feel natural and necessary. A free spirited approach it feels more liberating like it's 70s predecessors. Like a modern Jodorowsky the experimental and progressive aspects are on overdrive. There's also a strong 80s fantasy feel that blends perfectly into it's eclectic identity.

  Vagina eyes, expansive cosmic…